#38 The weirdness of Japanese apartments

Transcript

Alright, breakfast slash lunchtime. It's 1 p.m. but first meal of the day is breakfast no matter what time it is. So I'm continuing to experiment a bit with plum. Even though I'm pretty sure I don't really like plum. I really like the sour plum. You can get from 7-Eleven, you get these little sour plum candies, things like dried sour plum, so not really candies. They're so fucking sour, it's fucking crazy. It's a little tiny package, it only has like eight or nine of these things in it. These little circles, little flat circles. And I bought one when I got to Fukuoka and it's half full still. Like you can eat one of them for dessert and it's like so intense. You don't want to eat more than one. It's just like, whoa! But it's a very enjoyable experience for how insane it is. But then I've tried some other plum stuff and non-sour plum. It doesn't taste bad, it just kind of tastes vaguely a little odd, you know. It's just something that my palate is not used to. So today I had a salted macarole onigiri delicious. I got like a melon yogurt because that's just something we wouldn't really have. It's double melon. And whatever the two melons are, one of them is a bit bitter, so it's kind of sweet and bitter. It's kind of delicious. And then I got a pickled plum onigiri. And I was just like looking at it and I'm like, I just feel like if I got any other kind, even if I just got the old standard tuna mayo, you know, whatever. I'm gonna like whatever else I would get better than this I bet. But it's like, let me just try it. Let me just try it. Pick the plum onigiri. I don't know. Something in my mind is like maybe plum. But I feel like this is the make or break. This could decide, do I only go for things that say sour plum? Or is pickled plum onigiri gonna work? Let's find out, shall we? I'm just standing in the parking lot by the way outside of Family Mart in an obscure area of northern Fukuoka. The salted macarole onigiri, by the way, has become a fast favorite of mine. It's very good. I don't know if they have it besides Family Mart. But it's instead of the set up where it's got the fancy wrapping that keeps the nori separate from the rice, which is what this pickled plum one is. It's like a really elaborate package. You got to remove this part, then this part, then this part. Instead, it's the kind where it's just all together. So the seaweed is just wrapped around it. So it's soft and it's just kind of neat. It's like a whole different sort of experience. But all right, let's give this a shot.

Okay, the corners are, you know, quite a bit of rice. So let's dive in right in the middle. Let's see what we got here. Taste kind of good. Maybe I do like it. All right, so I like sour plum for sure. Pickled plum seems pretty good. I'm not sure what it was. I got a thing once that was like just like a little little package of just kind of straight up plums, just with the seeds taken out and halved. And I had to mix it with lemon rind. These weird zesty lemon things that I got because by itself it was just weird. But yeah, I think I like pickled plum as well. Okay, so maybe I do like plum. Something in my brain was like, all right. Pickled plum, keep exploring. Sour plum, yes for sure. I guess plum that just kind of hasn't been fucked with enough. That's where it becomes a problem. Maybe that's what I don't like.

All right, I'm just going for a little stroll. It is a beautiful day. Got one hoodie on and it's like it's right on the border of like one layer A. Is that enough? It is as long as the sun shining on me directly. And then if I get into the shade, then it's like, mm, this could get a little cold.

But I got a thermal shirt hanging out in my back pocket which I always have because I'm a good Canadian. And I think I figured out a route I can take today that'll be mainly back streets. But I really do need to use the map because I won't be crap. I already got lost once. It's like so confusing.

Mega counterintuitive. But yeah, what I've been realizing lately is there's no such thing as a small adventure in Japan. There's no such thing as a quick little low. Let's just go see what's 5:00 over there type of thing. Every time for over 30 days in a row, basically, it's been like, oh, now this leads to this and this leads to this and this leads to this. And yesterday was a bit of a breaking point of just like Jesus Christ. I basically just set off thinking like, oh, maybe I'll go to Tully's coffee. It's not close exactly, but you know, it's not crazy far.

No, am I walking the wrong way again? How does this keep happening?

Shit, that's the second time I've just started walking the wrong way.

But yeah, yesterday I walked up to the edges of the mountains here in Fukuoka and then I thought, oh, that'll probably be it. But then I found a nice little path that was really well delineated and marked. It was only 600 meters long. I'm like, God, let's go check that out. And then I did that and it was cool. But then it's like, well, this trail does keep going along the ridge of the mountain. And next thing you know, I'm trapped on the ridge of a mountain and the sun's going down and I had to escape into a golf course and take a long, awkward walk back into town and it's like, damn, I had a little quick adventure. It took all God damn day. It was ridiculous. Which most of the times when that happens, it's like, hey, so what? I mean, I'm visiting Japan. This is what I'm here to do. But yesterday was a rough one because I was in bad shape. I was very exhausted and I should not have been doing all that. But today I still made not a solemn vow, a subtle vow to stay home, to take it easy today. Give myself a fucking day off. Take a little rest.

But I really don't like staying home. I'm definitely not a homebody. It feels very, very stir craze inducing to me. I guess I can stay home if I've got like a video game or something to play. Even that. I mean, the mileage of that has worn off a lot on me from when I was young.

But I can kind of convince myself to stay in a bit if I've got something like that to do, but not even. Because even then, I mean, it's still like mentally, you're still going on an adventure and you're still getting out of there. But I remember like when I lived with my cousin back home and he got, yeah, who's that Kawami for free from like whatever PS Plus or whatever. And I remember playing that game and I got pretty addicted to that game. I played it a bunch.

But I still remember like in the winter time when it would get dark really early, it's like, yeah, I got to stop playing this because I got to go outside and I got to go for a walk. Like I have to. If the day goes by and I don't go outside, it's just like, what is happening? I fucked up. It don't feel good for me. So I was already thinking like, you know, if I do stay in tomorrow and just sit with my laptop and catch up on editing shit or something. I noticed on the walk home last night, I saw a laundromat and I was like, you know, I could do that just for something to do just a way to get out of the house to some level. Is this apartment I've got now, this Airbnb has a washing machine, but it doesn't have a dryer. It's just got the, like a clothes hanger thing, you know, you just pin up all your clothes and hang them. And that seems like a pretty cool thing to do if you've got like a nice second floor balcony or something and the sun is shining down. But I think this episode, I'll talk a bit about Airbnb stuff and this Airbnb, I mean, and this one, it just feels like I'm in a weird little cave. It doesn't, it doesn't feel open to the outside at all. And there is no way for a real sun to get in or anything. So I think the idea would be to put the clothes on the little clothing rack and put it underneath that kind of combined heater slash air conditioner unit that a lot of Japanese places have. But as an experiment, I just after I used a towel after I was showering, and it's just like, all right, let's just try it with this damp towel. And it took a long fucking time. Like the next day I felt like that the towel wasn't really all the way dry.

So I was like, and this is going to be a pain, you know, it's going to take days for my clothes to dry. But I saw that laundromat last night and that reminded me of when I was in Itabashi, I saw a guy do his laundry at the laundromat and then take the wet clothes home with him because he was going to just hang them up in the traditional fashion and let them dry. And I was like, ah, that's interesting. That's cool. It's neat to just pick up these little tidbits of information of like, oh, that's how some people manage laundry around these parts.

And I realized I could do the reverse. I could do the laundry in my little Airbnb apartment. And then I could take the wet laundry to the laundromat just to use the dryers. I don't have to fucking let my clothes sit around for two days just hoping that they'll dry and nice little excuse to get out of the house going a tiny little walk. Have a mini adventure. But then when I woke up today, it's just beautiful outside, although I had to infer that a little because again, my Airbnb, like I can't even tell what the weather's like outside. This place is just like a weird cave. But I was like, I just can't, I can't stay inside. Not when it's nice out, not when there's limited sunlight. It's fall in Japan right now. It's only going to be light for a little while. I just can't stay inside. I just can't. If I had a religion, this would be my religion. Go the fuck outside every day. Just go outside. You can't stay inside. It's like awful. I know it's a big thing in North America. People love to just stay inside. I can't fucking do it. Makes me nuts. Like when I was stuck in my hometown for COVID times, I did find some pretty nice little hikes in pretty good outdoor areas. But it's just that it just weren't enough of them. They just weren't enough options. So it's like I still went outside almost every day. Went on a little hike. It's just like, fuck, I've done this same hike 600 times. Oh shit. All right. So if I look at, so basically what I thought I would do today is a Renew yesterday's plan. Go to the Tullies. It's not exactly close, but it's not super fire. It's a good excuse to just take a little walk while the sun's up. And so it's not that I'm going to just stay inside because that's asking too much of myself. But I am going to make sure today does not spiral off into a crazy adventure. It's just not going to. I'm going to go to Tullies and I'm going to come back. And I've never been to this Tullies. I don't know what the setup is. I don't know if it'll even have seats that are easy to sit at. It's a Saturday. It could be busy. Even if I just get there and don't do shit just buy a coffee and come back. That's okay. Just that I did something while the sun was up because it is a gorgeous ass day. And I think I'll feel better about being squirreled away in my Airbnb when it's dark. I'd feel bad now. But all right, I'm at a bit of a busier street. So I'm going to see. I got two pads. I got a more direct one that splits off from here. But it might also be a little busy just because it's so direct. So I might go to a less direct street. Because it's a little hard to avoid noise when you just podcast outside like a weirdo. But if I can't avoid it a little, I will. God, this is loud as hell.

One, two, three. It's only four lanes. I guess that's not so bad. Yeah, let's time warp ahead to a quieter area.

All right, I'm doing a nice quieter street, but I can see up ahead of me. This one goes in an okay distance, but when you're not on the very major streets, it's just like, what's the longest street I can find before everything turns into a tangled ball of yarn? This one's pretty good, that's far-rish, but I can see. I can see the future coming, where it's like okay, now I've got to make choices, I've got to figure out where I'm going. But it's worth it to get away from the traffic. And it is kind of nice to, I mean, it's weird to like say that I got a day where I'm especially doing nothing because that's what I do every day. Every day I do nothing, but I guess there's different layers, different levels to doing nothing. Because this is doing nothing, maybe just doing nothing within a smaller radius, you know, it's not like, yeah, I'm going to go out to the fucking islands way out in the bay of Fukuoka. I'm not going to go way up in the mountains. I'm not going to do any of this crazy shit. I'm just going like two neighborhoods over to a coffee shop, that's all. It's kind of nice. Then I just walked by a fucking sign to a store that said, welcome wizards. And I was like, I wonder what this is, you know, like there's a bar in, I guess there's a couple of them in Vancouver that's like a nerd bar, you know, it's like D&D themed. And I guess there's a Toronto one that's like sci-fi more. Anyway, I thought maybe it was like a place like that, but it's just a barbershop. So it's like, welcome wizards. What? Hair wizards? Scissors wizards? What the hell is that? But I also saw a place that I couldn't 15:00 read the real name of it, but the English words said hypermedia shop. So I was like, all right, I'm up for some hypermedia. And it's basically a video rental store, and it did have some other stuff. It kind of had everything. It had some manga, it had some used phones, it had some UFO catchers, it had some gotcha machines. But it was kind of neat to see the same way that arcades are kind of non-existent in North America. You only find them in really specific Dave and bustery type circumstances and it really doesn't feel the same. So it's cool to go to an arcade here and just see tons of arcade machines. It also kind of felt that way at this fucking video store where it's just like, it's really big and it's like, this reminds me of the blockbusters of old, just like row after row of movies. And a lot of them were just stuff I'd never heard of, but then it does stretch back of like, here's movies from the 80s, you know, like North American movies, but they're in their Japanese form. You know, you get to see the Japanese versions. Because that was the thing that was kind of cool with nerds of North America was like, oh, I got the Japanese poster of some movie. So this was kind of cool because you get to see all the Japanese covers, every cover. Oh, there's the Japanese cover of Pretty Woman or Creed, you know, just all kinds of weird random stuff. That's kind of cool. But yeah, I just thought I'd ramble a bit about Japanese apartments. I've been meaning to bring this up for days and I just haven't got around to it. But like, there's definitely, I don't know, all the places I've stayed have got different weird pros and cons. But I was thinking about the apartment I stayed in here in Fuqua in 2019, the one that when I first got into town and I hiked over to Miyabashi Station, it went up the mountain. I stopped by that Airbnb, even just to walk past the outside of it. Because I liked it so much, it was definitely the best place I've ever stayed in Japan. And it was just a normal Japanese apartment. I even saw, like the way it was laid out. This one was on the second floor. See, it went upstairs. There was a front balcony. And then when you go in, right at the entrance was toilet on the left. Little square tub. It's like shower on the right. Oh nice, this road goes further than I thought it went. It went up a little hill and it's continuing on before I have to make a turn. But then it was like an open concept kind of apartment where the next area was like the little kitchen, which I pretty much never really used, that then led straight into the living room area. And it probably wasn't very big because Japanese apartments aren't very big. But in my memory it felt large because the back area, it was really high up, big high loft ceiling. And then it had a ladder you could climb up. And there was a loft area up there where you could sleep, although I didn't really use it that much. It just felt cool that it was there. And I think this is a pretty standard layout because I remember the YouTubers Katie and Eric, Katie spelled K-Y-D-E. I was looking for this video once and I couldn't find it. But at one point they were doing an apartment tour. I think it was they were leaving an apartment. And as a final goodbye they did a video touring the place. And it was that same setup with the loft area at the top.

But then they had a balcony that just looked out into the courtyard of a big apartment building. And all you could see were the other apartments. Again, good for hanging in laundry, not great for much else, I guess. Going out to smoke if you're a smoker. But in this case, because of the perfect placement of this building in Fukuoka, it was already on the second floor, the ground sloped down behind the building. So functionally it felt like the third floor. It was just open space for a rice field. And then there was a greenhouse and then the mountain, Mount Apariyama. It was the most incredible fucking view in the world. And it was right outside the window. And it was just a sunny, beautiful apartment. And I did spend days there just doing nothing. I was in Fukuoka for three weeks, same as this time. And I would either, every couple of days, go up the mountain and you know, have to give myself a little recuperation time. Once in a while, I would head down into the proper city to hang out with my friend, Brad. And then other days, if it was really hot because it was the dead of summer, you know, I would just stay in that apartment. It was such a fucking awesome apartment. Just go to the convenient and then just fucking hang out. And like, that's how much I loved that apartment. As I'm, you know, Joe, I don't want to hang out at home. I don't like hanging out at home. That's the one place where 20:00 I like hanging out at home. If I was there today, maybe I would have just stayed in because it was so cool. So that was kind of the top dog. And then since I've gotten back to Japan, there's been kind of ups and downs. But I guess what's most relevant to this current place I met is the place I stayed in Itabashi was the 60s, 70s style building where there's like a really distinct kind of architecture where you can tell it's an old building. Even just like the way the sink is and the way the taps look. And notably the incredibly short doorways for somebody who's six, two, it's a head bang and adventure, you know. But kind of neat at the same time, just kind of neat that you get to experience this.

And that apartment, I don't know, is kind of interesting because it was, it wasn't really upgraded or renovated per se. It was mainly just, let's just try to throw in modern conveniences. Here's a nice TV, here's some cool internet. You know, it was like, let's make it as nice as we can. But it's still very fundamentally a 70s building right up to the old timey shower where I had to light a pilot light for a gas burner thing like a gas little engine daily. I don't know how gas works. This weird gas process you had to use to heat water for the shower, which I could never figure out. But since it was so warm, I just took cold showers. I'm like, whatever. I don't know. But it was kind of cool. And the place in general was really nice. It did have, like I did see two cockroaches there, one near the shower and one was like chilling in the sink hiding underneath, like a basin. And there was a pretty big spider in the shower once. And one of the Airbnb reviewers did mention, you know, everyone, all the reviews are really nice. Clearly these people really tried their hardest with this place. But the reviewers would mention in that way when you don't want to be negative to someone's property, just about little visitors and stuff, you know, just trying to say like, yeah, there's bugs and stuff to get into the house. But maybe it'll be a pretty moth, you know, it doesn't all have to be bad. But I don't really know, I guess the real logistics of that. Like I just kind of took that at face value. Like that probably is true. I mean, Japan's very, very nice climate. It's just an island. There are insects and stuff everywhere. It seems natural that they would get into the house and if it's an old house. Or that's one of the things that somebody mentioned. It's like, yeah, you know, these old 70s houses. That's how it is. You got to expect a certain amount of insect invasion. And I mean, that's one of the things I like about Japan is that the delineation between indoor and outdoor is not like it is in Canada. In Canada, everything is indoor or outdoor. There's no middle ground. Where in Japan, everything is a middle ground. You know, when your outdoors, it sort of feels like you're indoors. When you're indoors, it sort of feels like you're outdoors. So I figured, hey, you know, just the price of doing business. But I guess I don't actually know. I mean, maybe that's not totally normal. Maybe that building actually has a cockroach problem. I don't know. I mean, I don't know what the parameters are. I don't know what the expectations should be. But I mean, it certainly wasn't that bad. But it did. I mean, after you see a cockroach, and especially if you see a second one, it does kind of rewire your brain a little to always be kind of on the lookout and to sort of be expecting to see stuff like that. Wow, this is one thing. Going down these little weird back streets, whatever cars are on these streets, they're having a rough time. Getting past each other, squeezing around corners and stuff. No wonder all the cars in Japan are so tiny or even like the trucks and the vans are like these little teeny-weeny versions. Because nothing else would be able to maneuver on these streets. If you brought a North American van back here, you'd be stuck in no time.

So, this new place I met, the first thing I noticed is that it very much fell in line with the Itabashi place in the sense that it is definitely a building of that same era.

And it's kind of interesting because it's sort of like a mix. Almost everything in the place is new. It's definitely been renovated way more than the other place had been. Everything is new. Everything is all done like brand new floors, brand new bathroom stuff, everything is new. But the fundamental design is still the old school design. It's even got it's a six tatami bedroom. In this case, you walk in, there's a kitchen and a bathroom off the kitchen that has the toilet and the shower in the same room. And then a sliding door, 25:00 the sliding paper door, the classic. I've never actually had a place with a sliding door yet. And then through the sliding door is the bedroom, which is six tatami mats big because it actually has six tatami mats in it. So everything is all spik and span and super brand new. But I guess just the pattern recognition of the human brain, the first thing that kind of came back to mind for me is like, okay, it's an old-style building. So I guess I should presume that it's not going to be quite as fortress tight as a modern house might be. So maybe I should be on the lookout. Are there going to be cockroaches and stuff? Are there going to be bugs? And that's where it felt kind of weird too because this is the first place where I didn't have a bed. Like this is all the way traditional style where it's like just get your futon down on the tatami and just sleep on the floor. And it did just kind of wig me out at first that first night of just like just felt weird. It's like I'm just on the floor. Like if there are bugs crawling around, you know, the idea is to stay up off the floor, you know, give yourself some separation from them. But I haven't seen any insects at all in that place.

Maybe it's because everything is so super renovated and everything is just all tight as a drum. Or maybe the other place need to bashy. Maybe it's not as normal as I was led to believe. I don't know. It feels normal though. It feels natural that in Japan you'd have insects and stuff get into your house. But to be honest, I only ever saw it in that one place. So maybe not.

Even with a map, this is a bit confusing. Okay, I think this is where I want to go. But yeah, I think also that first night, I mean, I was kind of tired from traveling and stuff and suddenly I'm in a new place and it is unlike any of the other apartments I'd been in. And I guess just because my brain was kind of wired for the bug thing. I wish I wasn't sleeping on the floor. I was like, I just keep imagining cockroaches and stuff and it's like, yeah, am I going to... Like that eerie, creepy moment, like with the one, the cockroach I found under the basin and the sink, because you just don't realize it's there and you pick up the thing and it's like, oh shit, there's you. It's like, is that going to happen with like my blankets or my futon? Am I going to fucking just take a blanket, pick a blanket up and like see a bug? It's just, it's just like illogically unpleasant. Like, I mean, clearly, obviously the worst place I stayed was the first Airbnb when I got here, which thankfully I did not carry any bedbugs with me. Zero evidence of bedbugs after I get out of there. Zero evidence of bedbugs after the first day or two, but it did have bedbugs and it just weighs on your fucking brain, whether you can see them or not, you know. So I was in that head space that first night. And I've talked several times about how I feel like you get a better appreciation for Japanese horror movies. If you walk around Japan at night, because it just has such an eerie, dark, oppressive feeling that is definitely different from North America. North America is very scary. If you go into the woods at night or something, pretty goddamn terrifying. But as with everything, it's like not accessible. Everything in North America is not easy to get to. It's out of the way. You got to go out of your way to get to these experiences and go to these places, no matter what they are.

Where Japan, everything is accessible. Everything is right there, right next to you all the time. You just have to leave your house and go walking around at night. And it's like, this is creepy as shit. I feel like I'm in a ghost movie right now with the fuck. So that's how I felt when I woke up at like three in the morning, randomly in this place. And I'm sleeping on the floor and I'm on the futon and I'm on the tatami mats. And I just see in the dimness the sliding doors. I don't know if it really is like paper on these doors. I don't know what's on them. But you know, back in the day, I guess they were paper doors. But just so traditionally Japanese looking and just dark. And in this weird little creepy feeling apartment that's like down on the first floor and tucked away in a corner. It's like around a corner, houses on every side. No sun could ever get in there. And I just remember waking up and feeling like frightened. I feel like I'm in another horror movie right now. Now I'm in some kind of like domestic horror movie that takes place in a traditional Japanese house. And I don't like this feeling. This feels bad.

So it's all small stuff. It's all subtle stuff. And in the case of stuff like the insects, it's stuff that doesn't even actually exist. But I just don't really like this place I'm in. I don't like this apartment, you know. It really feels like this is the place you'd live just because you just got to live somewhere. Don't really have a lot of choice. So I'm just going to live in this place. 30:00 But it's definitely not a place I would want to hang out in or spend time in. It's just like, but it's technically got all the stuff that you need.

But yeah, it definitely did not. It's not like a fun idea of like, oh yeah, I should just hang out there today. Like no fucking thank you. Just this creepy weird little Japanese apartment. I don't know.

And then it's also like a mix of, well, the guy Sataru, who I met in Chiba, he was saying how his experience with Airbnb. And he, one of his part-time jobs is to flip rooms, to clean rooms between guests. And his theory as to why Airbnb has become more expensive is because people expect too much out of it now. Instead of just like, hey, you got a spare room in your house, someone could stay in your spare room.

Now people kind of want this like, hotel type experience. And I definitely felt some of that in this place, like the little paper slippers. They left me a little, little slippers disposable slippers. Which I ended up actually using because that's another thing with this place, I guess. It's very cold. It's always cold in there, which in the summer is probably nice. But yeah, the floors are freezing cold. It reminds me in a bad way of my big old drafty, new Brunswick house I grew up in, that's a hundred years old, and I had no insulation. And it's kind of awkward. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this about when I woke up feeling like I was in a creepy horror movie.

Because this apartment was split into the two rooms. So the heater up on the wall is in the back wall of the sleeping area. So I guess the idea is at night, you close the sliding door and you only heat that one room, which does make sense. And luckily in Akiruno, I learned how to maneuver those machines, even though I can't read any of the stuff on the remote control. So I said it to 16, or if it was especially cold, like 17 or 18 degrees, but generally the lowest setting of 16 degrees, you could just put it on that and just let it kind of run overnight. And it'll just keep the room from getting ice cold, keep it a little, little temperate, a little okay.

But then that unfortunately leaves the other half of the apartment really fucking cold. And that's where the washroom is. So that's why I woke up at like three in the morning.

It is, I had to go pee, but that's another memory of the past of the house I grew up in, is I'm underneath a nice big blanket, relatively comfortable on this duvet.

But I don't want to get up because it's cold enough in that room that it's like, oh, even just to get up and to find a t-shirt to put on or something, it's like that's going to be a shock to the system, that's not going to be good. And then just the very idea of opening that sliding door and going into the ice cold icebox of the rest of the apartment just to go pee. So that's why I was just laying there, laying there for like 10 minutes, just like, oh fuck, I don't want to do this. And then I'm staring at the scary silhouette of the Japanese room. And it's all dark and quiet. And yeah, my mind just started just started wandering to horror movie stuff.

So yeah, it's just not very comfortable in general. It's just not a very homie vibe, not a very, I don't know. And again, technically it's got all the stuff. Oh, as well as the little slippers, the other little thing is they left little toothbrushes, little individual toothbrushes. And it's kind of cool, I've never seen this before, but you open the package with the toothbrush in it. And there's just like a little capsule, the unscrew that has a little bit of toothpaste in it. Just a wee bit of toothpaste, just enough to get you through the week or whatever. And I was like, this is pretty neat. That should be pretty cool. But that definitely, that fits. That's in line with what Satoru was saying is yeah, like people, they want all this stuff. They want your little disposable slippers and they want to have access to like, you know, just bring your own toothbrush. Why does there need to be a toothbrush in the Airbnb? But yeah, this place had all that kind of stuff. And it's like, yeah, I guess if every single place has to have all this type of stuff or people will like leave a bad review, I still think COVID is the main reason why the really cheap places are gone. But this certainly contributes. It's just the expectation does seem like it has raised. Because I was thinking like, yeah, it's pretty cool that I get a little toothbrush and the slippers turned out to be handy because this place is so fucking cold.

But also this place wasn't cheap. I mean, this was their debut grand opening sale. 35:00 And it was still like, I don't know, is it $45, $46, $47 a day? Which again, it's all relative. Yeah, sure, that's not like that expensive. But I mean, I found Airbnb's in the past for $18, $20, $22, $24. It's a lot fucking more than that. You know, and it's like not that great, not that fucking great. But I mean, even though this is a bit of a, or I'm just, I'm just yammering somewhat negatively about Airbnb. But I don't know, I think this could just be interesting in case, you know, what to expect maybe. What kind of Airbnb's are there in Japan? What kind of experience can you kind of expect to have? Figure, you know, why not? It's worth bringing up, why not? And I mean, this podcast hasn't had a clear point yet. No need to start now.

Also, I haven't had a coffee yet today because it's like, yeah, you know, I shouldn't have a coffee yet. I'm gonna go to a coffee shop. That's where I'll get my coffee. But it's probably got me a little more dour than usual also. My lack of coffee. But I feel like way better than yesterday, which is weird because I didn't get, I actually got quite a bit less sleep last night. So that's another thing, I guess, that tatami mats. So this is the first place that I've slept on the floor. But I kind of experienced this a little because Nora Hiko's placed in Chiba. It was kind of an interesting situation because he had a bunks where I was the only one in the bunks. Yeah, the three bunks were empty. So they were, they were bunks, so it felt kind of like a bed. It wasn't on the floor.

But each bunk had tatami mats on them. So it was kind of like both things. It was kind of an interesting little mix.

I think I accidentally stumbled to this Miyake Central Park. It doesn't seem very big on the map, but hey, it's something. Let's see what we got here. But I'd heard somewhere, I don't really remember where I picked this information up, but that the idea that sleeping on a futon, like why it maybe doesn't go so well in North America, is that the floors are too hard. Oh, good construction equipment.

Yeah, I guess it's just kind of like a ball field and construction. Lots of construction going on all the time, but I guess that's just how it is in the world. But yeah, North American floors, very, very stiff. So I mean, obviously you just toss a futon down on the floor. It's going to be a little rough. So I'd heard that the tatami floors make that easier, that it's sort of more client or softer. And I don't really know exactly what tatami is. It's just like a woven... I don't know, is it grass? I don't really know quite what it is. Dry grass, I guess. Something along those lines. Like a reed, maybe.

But it doesn't really make things appreciably softer in my experience, because I noticed with Norahiko's place, I pretty much have to sleep on my side, because just the way my cyst is, I got to sleep in there. As long as I sleep on my side, it's okay. If I sleep in weird positions or my legs get in odd shapes, then it can make my dumb cyst fill with fluid in the turts. And being a side sleeper and a bony gentleman is not good with the futon, because yeah, my hip just dug into this thing. So I just took a spare pillow and I had to arrange it under my hip while I slept at Norahiko's and then I made it okay. So I didn't do that at first here. And I kinda suspect maybe that's why I woke up yesterday feeling so fucked up, because it made no fucking sense. I got like 11 hours, not of uninterrupted sleep, but it was weird. It was like a weird amount of sleep. I don't normally sleep, you know, no more than anyone normally does. If I get seven or eight hours, that's good. So why did I sleep so much and felt so fucking awful?

And I was guessing that maybe it had to do with just running myself ragged too much. But last night, I found the spare pillow and I arranged it under my hip and I slept a lot less than I did the other day, but I feel okay, I feel all right. So I think maybe that was it. Maybe I just got like the world's worst sleep ever because my big bony hip was grinding into the floor because, I mean, it's like a big, big thick futon. I think there might even be two of them that I've got piled up on a tatami mat floor. And it's just a fucking floor, bro. It's not a bed. It's way too fucking hard. If you're a side sleeper, it's a goddamn nightmare. So that's another thing, just to be aware of, to be prepared for if you're in a situation 40:00 with tatami mats and futons and it's not a real bed. Watch that hip, son. If you sleep on your side. Oh, oh, you're in for a bad night. Man, I mean, I'll take it over having a train go by all the time or having people three feet from me coughing and snoring.

But yeah, definitely. I think that helped like crazy giving myself some extra cushioning, extremely, extremely necessary.

Oh, it's delightful. A coffee machine with actual cold coffee in it. So, the Tully's Quest failed. The upside to that is, I'm like, all right, sweet. Well, I haven't had a coffee yet today. I'm just going to get a coffee out of the next machine. But yeah, those Coke machines, man, they rule Southern Fukuoka, they're everywhere. And this time of year, they do not have any cold coffee. And today, after walking around all day, in the relative-nice weather, I want a cold one, the Fukuwanda, Asahi Gold Premium, 100% premium beans, only 100 yen. So, the reason the Tully's plan failed is I was walking along and I got to Tully's on the map. And there was no Tully's. So, I zoomed in a little and it's like, hmm, a hospital, eh? There was a hospital in Toronto. I mean, it's still there. But it's bathers and dundas that wasn't that far from my apartment. I used to live on dundas. And dundas and Brock. And it had a Tim Hortons in it. So, I was like, hmm, could this Tully's unexpectedly be inside a hospital? And indeed, it was. And that hospital in Toronto, I used to go in there sometimes just to hang out. You know, there's a big waiting room, big fluffy chairs. If I just needed somewhere to go, it was raining or something or whatever. Pull out a laptop and just hang out there because no one questions why you're in a hospital waiting room. They just think that you're waiting for someone who is supposed to be at the hospital. I heard Kurt Cobain used to do that when he was a semi-homeless in the Aberdeen area. Just go hang out at the hospital. But I think hanging out at the hospital was probably suspect behavior to begin with. And post-COVID, it just seems very weird. I don't think, you know, it's probably risking additional illness in the first place. I don't think I ever got sick from hanging out at the hospital. But post-COVID, it's like, don't just hang out at the hospital if you're not supposed to be at the hospital. It was already a weird thing to do. And it's like, well, I'm certainly not going to do that here. So no tallys for me. Sounds like that's fine. Let me just go get a coffee, which I just got.